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Scenario 6 – Gilbert Islands (continued)
After seeing my 2nd wave at Tarawa stopped on the beach I moved my 2nd wave far to the East on Makin for several turns. Hopefully the Japanese defenders were flanked.
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Scenario 6 – Gilbert Islands
Tarawa is surrounded by landing zones. It was tempting to use four or more landing zones to chop up the Japanese defenders. I (mostly) resisted temptation. Thus far the Japanese have limited armor and no mechanized units. This limits their mobility. The one time I did not concentrate my forces got my Marines chopped up.
My strategy is landing on one end of Tarawa and sweeping to the other end of the island. This provides two advantages. My forces are concentrated and heavy artillery can be landed on a secured beach. Long range fire from my 155s has been devastating. There are three landing zones, but they are clustered together. Landing zone one is a risk because it is slightly isolated from landing zone two and three. But if landing zone one is successful it should destroy the Japanese HQ and diminish the effectiveness of Tarawa’s defenders.
I must knock out five bunkers on the larger island of Makin. But the bunker locations are unknown. Because Tarawa has air strips I committed a larger force there.
1775: Rebellion, from boardgame publisher Academy Games and PC developer HexWar and now available through Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux, sits uncomfortably between the kindred worlds of board and PC strategy gaming. An adaptation of Academy’s well-regarded Euro-style board game on the American Revolution, it translates the source material very faithfully but will leave PC-focused strategy gamers unsatisfied.
1775 tells the story of America’s revolution against the British Empire. There are seats for two teams of four players each, but the game can just as easily accommodate two players taking both sides of their team. French and Hessian units can enter play on the sides of the Americans and British, respectively, while Native American units can enter play or become controlled by one or both sides.
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Scenario 5 Bougainville – Avery Abernethy
In the Bougainville scenario you have to land, advance, build two airfields and then survive the Japanese Counter-Attacks. Your Marines must be aggressive to take the ground and build both landing strips within 20 turns. A large surface fleet naval battle must be won to protect your Marine supply ships.
The Land Battle, continued:
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Scenario 5 Bougainville – Avery Abernethy
The Naval Battle:
The key to victory is keeping a screen of destroyers between your cruisers and the Japanese destroyers. If the Japanese destroyers get to close range and launch torpedoes your cruisers are doomed. But torpedoes can only be launched once every four turns. My destroyers are both shields to absorb torpedo attacks and spears to torpedo Japanese cruisers after the Jap destroyers are sunk. A second advantage of a tightly clustered fleet is better anti-aircraft fire.
